An Overview of Ensembl
- Ewan Birney1,3,
- T. Daniel Andrews2,
- Paul Bevan2,
- Mario Caccamo2,
- Yuan Chen1,
- Laura Clarke2,
- Guy Coates2,
- James Cuff2,
- Val Curwen2,
- Tim Cutts2,
- Thomas Down2,
- Eduardo Eyras2,
- Xose M. Fernandez-Suarez1,
- Paul Gane2,
- Brian Gibbins2,
- James Gilbert2,
- Martin Hammond1,
- Hans-Rudolf Hotz1,
- Vivek Iyer2,
- Kerstin Jekosch2,
- Andreas Kahari1,
- Arek Kasprzyk1,
- Damian Keefe1,
- Stephen Keenan2,
- Heikki Lehvaslaiho1,
- Graham McVicker1,
- Craig Melsopp1,
- Patrick Meidl2,
- Emmanuel Mongin1,
- Roger Pettett2,
- Simon Potter2,
- Glenn Proctor1,
- Mark Rae2,
- Steve Searle2,
- Guy Slater1,
- Damian Smedley1,
- James Smith2,
- Will Spooner2,
- Arne Stabenau1,
- James Stalker2,
- Roy Storey2,
- Abel Ureta-Vidal1,
- K. Cara Woodwark1,
- Graham Cameron1,
- Richard Durbin2,
- Anthony Cox2,
- Tim Hubbard2, and
- Michele Clamp2
Abstract
Ensembl (http://www.ensembl.org/) is a bioinformatics project to organize biological information around the sequences of large genomes. It is a comprehensive source of stable automatic annotation of individual genomes, and of the synteny and orthology relationships between them. It is also a framework for integration of any biological data that can be mapped onto features derived from the genomic sequence. Ensembl is available as an interactive Web site, a set of flat files, and as a complete, portable open source software system for handling genomes. All data are provided without restriction, and code is freely available. Ensembl's aims are to continue to “widen” this biological integration to include other model organisms relevant to understanding human biology as they become available; to “deepen” this integration to provide an ever more seamless linkage between equivalent components in different species; and to provide further classification of functional elements in the genome that have been previously elusive.
Footnotes
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Article and publication are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.1860604. Article published online before print in April 2004.
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↵3 Corresponding author. E-MAIL birney{at}ebi.ac.uk; FAX + 44 1223 494468.
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press